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MOJO: Mobile Journalism Used Everyday

Mobile journalism is the use of connecting small devices such as smartphones and tablets to produce and edit audio, video, photos, and multimedia stories for online and social platforms for TV, radio, and other media news outlets.

Mobile Journalism is often referred to as “mojo” and these reporting techniques have increased in popularity as smartphones have increase prevalence in daily life.

Smart phones are so much easier to take around, they are lighter and easier to pack for travel, and create less hassle and stress compared to traditional methods of shooting film, usually on large and bulky cameras and equipment. From personal experience, I own a film camera which is not even a large professional video shooting camera, and I always hesitate to bring it places because of its size and weight compared to my slim and weightless iPhone. Since the iPhone now has immense capabilities to shoot high quality photo and video with high quality sound, more and more journalists are opting to use their iPhone and other small devices.

Above displays an example of the tools that can be used in addition to the iPhone alone to enhance the entire finished result. This website lists many essential tools that can be used with a phone to shoot professional scenes. Some of these tools allow the iPhone to be more stable than any person could by simply holding the phone alone. It also allows the iPhone to swivel smoothly and seamlessly while making large turns in filming. There are no jerky motions that a cameraman would get if he were to be filming by just holding the iPhone. It stabilizes the phone to produce a final product of a very professional looking video that people would think were filmed on a massive professional camera.

Jeff Semple is a famous mobile journalist. He covers many news stories by himself, using only his iPhone. His competitors have to have many crew members to hold the cameras and all the supplies, someone interviewing and holding microphones, and more people to then edit the material after it is filmed. On an iPhone, Jeff can shoot, edit, and send his footage back to the studio all on his own, in such a short amount of time.

You would never think that some of these high quality news stories were filmed on an iPhone.

After having experience myself with some of these advanced tools using an iPhone and getting to walk around Barcelona, I completely understand why mojo is so popular. I think in the future, most journalists and media entities will start converting more from traditional means of filming and editing, to mojo. It is faster, easier, more convenient and will change the game of journalism.